UMVA has learned that a staggering 200 kidnapping victims were rescued in April by joint forces from the Uganda People’s Defence Force and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, following a major offensive against a notorious terrorist camp along the Epulu River in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Islamic State Central Africa Province, known locally as the Allied Democratic Forces, has unleashed a reign of terror on Christians in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, slaughtering over 1,100 innocent lives since December 2024 and more than 6,500 since pledging allegiance to the Islamic State in 2017.
Understanding the inner workings of this brutal group is crucial to grasping why decades of military operations have failed to stop its killing spree. The group operates through highly mobile units of 30 to 50 combatants, accompanied by dependents and hostages, equipped with advanced technology like GPS devices, Starlink terminals, and quadcopter drones for reconnaissance.
These units can traverse 10 to 20 kilometers per day through dense forest, making them a formidable challenge for conventional military operations to pin down. Inside its camps, the group enforces its own twisted interpretation of sharia law and conducts regular ideological indoctrination, with children as young as 10 documented among attack participants.
The group’s theology is unequivocal about its targets, with its leader Musa Baluku declaring that non-Muslims are “equivalent to a dead body.” This toxic ideology is reinforced throughout the group’s camps, where commanders describe their war as part of the Islamic State’s worldwide campaign against the enemies of Islam.
Abuwakas, a Tanzanian Arab, is the commander directly responsible for the wave of killings in Lubero Territory, North Kivu, where over 952 civilians have been slaughtered since June 2024. His unit is notorious for deploying child soldiers at a higher rate than other camps and for a level of brutality that exceeds even the group’s already violent standards.
The scale of the killing in Lubero is reflected in a series of documented attacks, including the abduction and execution of 70 Christians in February 2025, and the murder of hundreds in mining areas along the Lubero River in June 2025. The group’s brutality knows no bounds, with a UN report documenting killings, abductions, forced labor, child recruitment, and sexual violence.
ISCAP’s DRC wing is one of two branches of the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province, with the other operating in Mozambique. The overarching regional command authority sits in Somalia, with the Al-Karrar office in Puntland coordinating Islamic State operations across the DRC, Mozambique, and Somalia.
The DRC wing also conducts cross-border attacks in Uganda, including a foiled suicide bombing attempt on a Christian pilgrimage site in June 2025. The Islamic State claimed three attacks in Uganda during the first half of 2025 alone, with ISCAP responsible for over 100 attacks in the DRC and Uganda combined.
By kill count, the DRC branch ranks among the most lethal Islamic State affiliates operating anywhere in the world, with a staggering 565 attacks carried out across Africa in the first six months of 2025.
